Cuba, U.S. Still Far Apart on Refugee Crisis Solution

By Stanley MeislerLos Angeles TimesNEW YORK

Cuban and American diplomats, while laying aside any obvious hostile
feelings, remained far apart after the opening round of talks Thursday
aimed at working out an agreement for halting the relentless waves of Cuban
rafters seeking an American haven.

"We still have a long way to go before having an agreement and a long
way to go to solving the problem," said Ricardo Alarcon, head of the Cuban
delegation. Neither side had expected to reach agreement on the first day.

State Department spokesman David Johnson described the talks, which
continue Friday, as "serious, professional and businesslike." This
diplomatic jargon, another U.S. official explained, meant that the talks
moved with efficiency and "without hostility."

Alarcon described the opening session as "businesslike and proper."

Judging by the few comments made to the press and television, the two
sides were not far apart on the immediate issue of what needs to be done
right now about the thousands of Cubans fleeing their homeland.

But the Americans still refused to accept the Cuban contention that the
root of the problem lay with the U.S. embargo on trade and that no
long-term solution was possible without dealing with it.

"Everytime I speak, I can assure you, I bring up the embargo," Alarcon,
former Cuba foreign minister and U.N. ambassador, told the Cable News
Network. "...By making life more difficult for people down there, you are
encouraging people to leave."

But Michael Skol, the deputy assistant secretary of state who leads the
American negotiators, told reporters as he entered the headquarters of the
U.S. Mission to the United Nations that he intended to talk only about
ending the "chaotic, dangerous, unsafe migration north from Cuba on the
waters."

Asked about delving into wider issues, Skol held up a large binder and
said, "I've got a briefing book here, and it is on migration issues only.
There's nothing here about embargo, about economics, or about anything
else. Tabs A through M: all migration."

The two sides had similar views on migration itself. Skol said it was in
the interests of both countries "to establish a firm system of legal, safe,
orderly migration from Cuba." Clinton administration officials have said
they are prepared to offer a guarantee of visas for well over 20,000 Cubans
a year if Fidel Castro's government stops the exodus of rafters.

Alarcon said the United States should grant more visas to Cubans so they
can leave Cuba by plane instead of by makeshfit rafts. Under an agreement
reached between Castro and the Reagan administration 10 years ago, the
United States has the authority to issue 27,845 visas a year to Cubans.
But, despite long waiting lists, the U.S. consular office in Havana
actually grants only 3,000 visas a year.

The sudden exodus has embarrassed President Clinton, who, in an attempt
to stop the tide, revoked the 35-year-old policy of admitting all Cubans
legally as special political refugees. Coast Guardsmen are instead rounding
them up at sea and detaining them in camps at the U.S. naval base in
Guantanamo Bay on the island of Cuba.

Although U.S. officials insist that the detained Cubans, like the
Haitians in Guantanamo camps, will not be allowed to enter the United
States, the Cuban rafters keep coming. More than 2,000 were picked up by
the Coast Guard Wednesday, and, by Thursday, according to the Pentagon,
there were 15,471 Cubans and 14,148 Haitians in Guantanamo.

State Department spokesman Johnson said the talks at the U.S. mission,
which included a working lunch, lasted for six hours, and would move a few
blocks away Friday to the offices of the Cuban mission to the United
Nations. According to Johnson, the two sides used most of the time for
detailed presentations of their positions.

He said that Deputy Assistant Secretary Skol discussed legal
immigration, police enforcement of illegal immigration, and the return to
Cuba of certain undesirable immigrants. During the large exodus from the
Cuban port of Mariel in 1980, Castro loosed a number of prison and mental
hospital inmates, and the United States has long demanded that he take them
back.

There have been hints that some inmates may be among the rafters as
well. In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Dennis Box said the U.S. government
has evidence that some prison inmates were among the Cuban refugees taken
to Guantanamo although the number is far less, so far, than it was during
the Mariel boatlift.